Resources

The Sherman Centre offers a variety of tangible resources that can assist researchers with their projects. These include:

High-powered Workstations

We have three HP Z840 workstations with 10-core Xeon processors, 64GB of memory, and a 500GB SSD as the primary OS and application drive. They also have Nvidia Quadro K2200 GPUs currently driving twin 4K displays. Translated into simple English: they can handle pretty much every computing task thrown at them, and can render even the largest, highest resolution images with ease. They are connected to McMaster’s Active Directory instance, which means that anyone with a valid MAC ID can sit down and work at them with no barriers.

We’ve loaded up the machines with a wide range of software, both proprietary and open source, to fill many digital scholarship needs. This ranges from Adobe’s Creative Cloud to esoteric software such as AntConc and SuperCollider. If something isn’t on the machines and is available for no or low cost, we will likely add it for you upon request.

3D Printers

While the Lyons New Media Centre runs a public 3D printing service where one just submits a job to be printed, the Sherman Centre has three 3D printers–an Ultimaker 2, a Makerbot 5th gen, and a Lulzbot TAZ 4–that are available to researchers interested in engaging more deeply in modelling and fabrication. Please contact us if interested in exploring working with our printers.

Storage

The Sherman Centre utilizes two “Backblaze pods,” large 4U storage servers (picture), which offer a combined 300TB of storage. For those needing a temporary repository for research-related files, we may well be able to assist.

Made possible by a generous gift from the Lewis & Ruth Sherman Foundation.